Object Relations Theory

Transcription

1 Object Relations Theory Freud proposed Instincts have four basic characteristics: (1) a source in some bodily deficit [sexual deprivation] (2) an aim gratification of the need [i.e., release of sexual energy] (3) an impetus that propels the person to act (4) an object through which the instinct achieves its aim. Melanie Klein Object means another person (can mean other things too but let s not get into that) Mental representation: is the internal, mental representation of an object External Object: an actual person in the world that a person has invested with emotional energy Internal Object: a person s representation of another such as a reflection of a child s way of relating to the mother. 1

2 Self: An internal image. Conscious and unconscious mental representations of oneself. Self-representation: A person's inner representation of himself or herself as experienced in relation to significant others. There are different points of view amongst object relations theorists regarding: 1. How these mental representations develop 2. How these representations impacts a person 3. Its implications for personality development. W.R.D. Fairbairn Concerned with the relationships between people than with the drives within them. Early relationships with parents shapes the emotional life of the child and determines the emotional experiences that the child will have later in life, because the early libidinal objects become the prototypes for all later experience of connection with others. 2

3 Introject (i.e., mentally take in) Splitting Ideal Mother object from the Rejected object Rejected object further split into: Need exciting Need rejecting Central self attached to the idealized internal object Rejecting self angrily attached to the need rejecting object Craving Self longingly but unsatisfyingly attached to the need exciting object Otto Kernberg and Margaret Mahler [Object relationship is associated to a range of] clinical psychopathological phenomena, on what Anna Freud has called developmental disturbances, which the developmental flux of energy may even out during later development, or which, in certain instances, may be precursors of infantile neurosis or middle range pathology. In rare cases, in which the subphase development was severely disordered or unsuccessful, we found, as did others such as 3

4 Frijling-Schreuder, Kernberg, and G and R Blanck, that borderline phenomena or borderlines states, and even psychosis may result. Mahler, 1975 Borderline Personalities 1. A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self image, and affect 2. Marked impulsivity 3. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment...observations are interpreted with psychodynamic constructs including the...confluence of prevalent conflicts deriving from separation-individuation factors with those deriving from the following oedipal period (Kernberg, 1980, p. 112) Primitive Ego Defense Mechanisms... protect the ego from conflicts by means of dissociating or actively keeping apart contradictory experiences of the self and of significant others (Kernberg, 1980, p. 6). Mahler uses identity to refer to the earliest awareness of a sense of being, of entity a 4

5 feeling that includes in part, we believe, a cathexis of the body with libidinal energy. It is not a sense of who I am but that I am. Malher, 1975 Separation or Separateness 5

6 The psychological birth of the human infant. The Normal Autistic Phase 0 to 3 Months Self undifferentiated Normal Symbiotic Phase 3 to 4 Months Symbiosis Differentiation Phase (4 to 6 Months) Hatching from mother-infant symbiotic common orbit Splitting is a primitive defense mechanism whereby the positive and negative memories are kept separate and Practicing Phase (5 to 16 Months) Rapprochement Phase (15 to 22 Months and Beyond) Toddler phase separation anxiety Object Constancy 6

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